Recent advancements in the field of television content packaging and distribution systems have led to a massive development of numerous technologies and broadcasting platforms that are revolutionizing the way consumer devices access and playout media content. Usually, broadcasting platforms refer to the types of networks that are used to deliver the media content to the consumers. Currently, the broadcasting platforms, such as analog terrestrial broadcast, digital terrestrial broadcast, direct-to-home satellite broadcast, cable, Internet Protocol (IP), and over-the-top television (OTT), compete and strive to increase their appeal by gaining and retaining the audience viewing the media content.
Modern streaming protocols, such as HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) and Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH), are implemented to support streaming of various live content services, such as through DIRECTV NOW℠, SLING TV℠ and PLAYSTATION™ VUE, to consumer devices. Due to dissemination of such modern streaming protocols in the television, radio, and broadcasting sector, it is evident that the success of broadcasting will be dependent on the ability of the network provider to gain access to the content that consumers demand, and to differentiate their offering from that of incumbent broadcasters or find breakthrough modes of media content delivery.
Increased competition has led the broadcast providers (or the network providers) to differentiate their offering and handle multiple channels at the same time, which in turn have added unparalleled levels of complexity. This requires installation of large infrastructures and resources to maintain uninterrupted media content delivery for existing channels and also meet the ever-increasing demand of new channels.
Given the trends toward media content distribution, there is required a television content packaging and distribution system that may decide what type of media content is to broadcast as disparate live media output streams and when to air them, defined by a programming schedule. The type of media content may correspond to live input streams, pre-encoded media assets, or an intelligent combination of the live input streams and pre-encoded media assets in mixed mode. Accordingly, the disparate live media output streams may be organized into channels to be delivered to consumers and ensure an adequate or maximum utilization of airtime. Further, there is required a system that may create branches of the channel based on user selection to maximize audience retention at various transitions within the disparate live media output stream manifests. This may provide the network provider with the capability to not only provide new channel offerings in cost-effective manner but also provide enhanced, intelligent, and personalized viewer experience to increase their appeal in order to gain a wider audience and retain the audience viewing the media content.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with some aspects of the present disclosure as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.